Sunderrajan Krishnan

The field research study conducted by Carewater INREM Foundation attempts to establish the impacts of groundwater contamination with fluoride and arsenic in India. It maps the affliction severity, the medical cost and wage loss through a multi-location study in some villages in the States of Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal.

The report by Carewater INREM Foundation draws inferences from studies across the Indo-Gangetic Basin on using local well driller knowledge to construct digital groundwater databases. The low density of current groundwater instrumentation networks in the region is both cost and management intensive, contrary to local knowledge, which has greater spatial coverage and can be obtained at a relatively lower cost. An efficient way to tap such local groundwater knowledge is through well drillers. 

The report by Carewater INREM Foundation deals with Reverse Osmosis (RO) technology, which is emerging as an important solution for drinking water treatment in rural Gujarat. RO plants with capacity ranging from 10 litres per hour (lph) to 6000 lph are now supplying drinking water in several hundred villages of the State. Small sized plants with capacity < 20 lph are used by individual families whereas medium to large sized plants (>100 lph) are being used for public consumption.

The report by Carewater INREM Foundation deals with groundwater and well water quality in the alluvial aquifers of Central Gujarat. Gujarat has a hydrogeology representative of almost all aquifer types and depositional & formation eras. Contamination of aquifers along with scarcity of groundwater resources due to increase in water demand and reduction in recharge of groundwater from changing landuse, is a problem in Central Gujarat.

The discussion paper by Carewater INREM Foundation on possibility of revival of dug wells in hard rock India through recharge is based on a field study across ten districts of the country. The study seeks to understand how localized governance of groundwater in hard rock areas is to be pursued through pricing (water, energy), legal regulation and community institutions. Water supply augmentation and demand management are both to be taken care of, directly through regulation or through indirect instruments such as pricing.

The report by Carewater INREM Foundation deals with the duel between popular science used in decision making by farmers and the formal science of hydrogeology that is based on scientific data collection. These two parallel streams of knowledge exist together, sometimes complement, and at other times are at conflict. People’s knowledge on hydrology is not ‘dying’, but thriving and growing well, refreshed continually by interfaces with science. In hard rock areas, the high hydrogeologic variability makes observation as important as theory since it is localized, pervasive and relevant to the needs of people.

This research paper attempts to understand and map the Reverse Osmosis (RO) phenomenon, a technology that is turning out to be an important solution for drinking water treatment in rural Gujarat. Treatment plants with capacity ranging from 10 litres per hour (lph) to 6000 lph are now supplying drinking water in several hundred villages of the state. Small sized plants with capacity < 20 lph are used by individual families whereas medium to large sized plants (>100 lph) are being used for public consumption.

A workshop on groundwater was organised by ACWADAM and Arghyam Trust in Pune in May 2009, that brought together several experts in the field, and explored diverse topics such as the importance of scale in groundwater resource planning and management, importance of aquifer typologies, participatory processes of groundwater management, groundwater regulation and groundwater linkages with watershed development, markets and policy matters.

The attempt of the workshop and research papers presented, was to highlight contemporary issues in groundwater management, and to look at it through the multiple lenses of hydrogeology, sociology, economics, livelihoods, environment, disasters and so on.

Guest post on the Portal by Sunderrajan Krishnan, CAREWATER, (Center for Action, Research and Education on Water), www.carewater.org . === As a response to water stress in hard rock areas of the country, the Government of India has designed the Artificial Programme on Dug Well Recharge aimed at rejuvenating hard rock aquifers across the country. The idea is to divert rainfall runoff into open wells as a means of harvesting rainfall runoff and increasing recharge into aquifers. Currently as of April 2009, the program is underway in a couple of states, mainly in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu, and other states are following suit. The program is ambitious in the sense that it aims to bring in millions of dug well owning farmers towards recharging. How will such a program be implemented, monitored and channeled so that the results are achieved to satisfaction? CAREWATER has designed a network of partners and is conducting studies to understand Dug well recharge and providing feedbacks to this national programme on artificial dug well recharge. Towards this purpose, since September 2008 we have created a partner base of organizations who along with our expertise are carrying out ground studies and analysis. Some of these results are available now on our website http://www.carewater.org (Please click on the link at the bottom of the homepage). We hope to keep updating this page as the program continues and wish to have more partners join our endeavor. In particular we have published a study of dug well recharge. The study is summarized below. We would like a larger discussion of the results of the study. Your comments below will be very useful to take this project forward more effectively.

Arsenic and fluoride are the two main natural contaminants of groundwater in India. The related diseases due to prolonged exposure are arsenicosis and fluorosis, prevalent in many arid villages of India.